Ring Game

by Pete Hautman

  Polly heard the soft click of the door closing behind him. In precisely six minutes, he would return for his massage table, folding it with his efficient, short-fingered hands, never meeting her eyes, in and out in seconds. Polly gave herself four of those minutes to lay still, letting her body remember the massage, then she rolled off the table and dressed. She sat behind her desk, turned on her computer, and began reviewing the weekly cash-flow statement. It had been a negative period—a lot of money going out to Stonecrop. One shipment of limestone had cost them over forty thousand dollars.

  Stonecrop, the future world headquarters of the Amaranthine Church of the One, had been under construction for more than a year. It had been part of Rupert Chandra’s vision since his awakening—a permanent haven for the first immortals, a retreat where church members could insulate themselves from the madness of the Death Program and the coming collapse of the twentieth-century military-industrial construct.

  Three years ago Rupe had signed a purchase agreement for a 236-acre tract of land in western Wisconsin, sixty miles southeast of Minneapolis. It was a beautiful site located on the bluffs high above the Mississippi River, and a bargain at nine hundred dollars an acre. He had named it Stonecrop, and had declared it to be the future sanctuary of the Amaranthines as foretold by Zhang Daoling.

  Polly thought her Eternal Companion had lost his ever-loving mind. Back then, the Amaranthine Church had been little more than a small-time New Age workshop, a proto-religion with fewer than three dozen adherents who met once a week in the back room of Ambrosia Foods. They could hardly make the monthly rent on their store, let alone take on a two hundred thousand-dollar debt. Polly had been furious. When she found out her husband had taken out a second mortgage on their condo for a down payment, their marriage had nearly imploded.

  Hyatt Hilton, she remembered, had thought it all quite amusing. When they incorporated the Amaranthine Church of the One, Rupe insisted on transferring the Stonecrop mortgage to the corporation. Hyatt had refused to sign the papers, saying that he wouldn’t accept any ownership of an entity with negative value. That, at least, had worked out for the best. It had made it a lot easier to get rid of him.

  Somehow, they had survived those difficult years. Driven by Rupe’s faith, optimism, and refusal to entertain the possibility of failure, ACO membership grew exponentially. When they needed money, it seemed, new members would appear, or old members would add to their Life Accounts, or the bank would prove to be uncharacteristically receptive to Rupe’s promises. For several months, Rupe and Benjy Hiss, a young architect and one of their charter members, spent their evenings building a scale model of Stonecrop, a Utopian community designed to last for millennia. Benjy quit his job and came to work full time for the ACO, and a year ago last May, ground was broken.

  The chapel and the main cottage were nearly complete, but at least another year and another six million dollars would be required to complete the parsonage, the cottages, the auditorium and the three-mile long, twelve-foot-tall limestone wall that was to surround the entire compound. The expense weighed heavily upon Polly, who was responsible for church finances, but so far they had been able to attract enough new members, and extract enough donations from existing members, to keep the work moving forward. When Stonecrop was completed, it would be a fortress. As Rupe liked to point out, “It must stand for ten thousand years.”

  One small problem was that the plans called for only nine cottages, but Rupe had promised private quarters to twenty-three of the Faithful. Numbers never seemed to bother Rupe.

  “Eternity will provide,” he would say.

  It had been a particularly expensive week with the limestone shipment, plus more graft to the local township officials to have some code violations overlooked, and an astonishing nineteen-thousand-dollar bill from the electricians. Perhaps eternity would provide, but Polly was counting more on Friday’s Anti-Aging Clinic.

  Some time later Polly heard a knock on her office door. She looked up from the computer monitor and found that the massage table had disappeared—Obo had come and gone without her noticing.

  “Come in,” she said.

  It was Chip, followed by Chuckles. Polly sat back in her chair and smiled, anticipating good news. The two men arranged themselves in front of her desk.

  “Well?” she finally asked, “How did it go?”

  Chip said, “Not bad.” His eyes were somewhere behind her.

  Chuckles made a sound with his lips.

  Polly said, “Chuckles?”

  “Yeah,” Chuckles said. “It went real good. He’s taking us serious now, and that’s no lie. And we still alive.”

  “We’ve got him scared,” Chip added quickly.

  “Yeah, he scared all right.”

  A whiff of butyric acid extinguished the last glowing remnants of Polly’s massage. “Tell me what happened,” she said.

  Frowning, Hyatt examined the GTO’s hood, his nose almost touching the marred finish. He said, “It was only birdshot, Joe. It just marked up the paint is all.” He licked a finger and rubbed one of the gray spots to no effect. “That’ll buff right out.”

  “Fine, if it buffs out it’ll save you some money.”

  “You were way out of range. I was just trying to scare you.” He dropped his eyes to the foliated shotgun in Crow’s hands and hastily added, “I didn’t know it was you at the time, of course. And I want to make things right by you.”

  “I’ll get an estimate.”

  “One nice thing about a gun like that, you can carry it down the street and nobody knows what you’ve got.”

  “Is that why all the foil?”

  “Nah, that was my crazy buddy Jimmy. It’s his gun.”

  “What are these things sticking out?”

  “Antennae.”

  “Very nice. I’m sure Jimmy won’t mind if I keep his magic gun.”

  Hyatt shrugged, apparently bored with the topic. He drummed his long fingers on the GTO’s roof. “When I was a kid, this was the hottest thing going. What’s it got in it?”

  “Four hundred cubes. Three hundred sixty-six horses.”

  “Huh. A real gas hog, I bet.”

  “Not too bad,” Crow lied. “Tell me something, Hy. What did you do to get those guys so pissed at you?”

  “I didn’t do anything. Not really. Not yet. I mean, it’s not what I did, it’s what I know.”

  Crow waited for more.

  “I mean, I know everything about the ACO, Joe. I know all their secrets.”

  “Like how to live forever?”

  Hyatt nodded. “Physical immortality is a real possibility, Joe.”

  “You just take your vitamins and avoid getting shot, right?”

  “It was my idea, you know.”

  “What was? Immortality?”

  Hyatt answered seriously, “No. Rupe was the first. But I founded the Amaranthine Church. If it wasn’t for me, Polly and Rupe would still be hawking vitamins. They’d be immortal, but what would be the point?”

  “I heard they kicked you out.”

  “They did.”

  “How could they kick you out of your own church?”

  Hyatt shrugged. “Legally speaking, you can’t own a religion. We’d incorporated as a nonprofit and copyrighted our name and materials under the name. Rupe and Polly had their names on the lease and the bank account. I was a silent partner. Actually, legally speaking, I wasn’t a partner at all. But we had an understanding. Where I come from, a man’s word is his bond.”

  “I thought you came from up on the Range. Biwabik, wasn’t it?”

  “I told you that?” Hyatt looked surprised. “Anyway, the point is that I trusted them, and they cut me out. Let me tell you, Joe, you ever own your own business, you better own it. You can’t believe what anybody tells you. I talked to a lawyer. There was nothing I could do.”

  “Is that why you broke up that meeting last month?”

  Hyatt tipped his head. “You heard about that? Jesus Christ, I’m talking
to Mr. Moto here. I was upset. I lost my head, and they threw me out.” Hyatt crossed his arms and produced a flat smile. “What else do you know about me? You’re checking me out, aren’t you? Did Sophie ask you to check me out?”

  “I’m just trying to find out why my car has all these marks on it.”

  “Seems to me the question is, why were you following me in the first place?”

  Crow did not reply. He was still trying to work that one out himself.

  “You know, pointing that gun at me, Joe, that really scared Carmen.”

  “Oh? I was trying to scare you.”

  “I knew you weren’t going to shoot me. How long have we known each other? I wasn’t worried. But Carmen, she doesn’t know you like I do.”

  Crow thought back to the scene in Hyatt’s living room. “She didn’t look scared to me,” he said. “In fact, she didn’t look like she gave a damn, one way or the other.”

  “You’re wrong about that.” Hyatt pushed his hands into the pockets of his red-and-gold striped pants.

  “How come you’re marrying her, Hy?”

  Hy raised his eyebrows and spread his pocketed hands, which caused the sides of his trousers to spread like a pair of bloomers. “What do you mean? I love her.” He frowned. “I don’t understand how my marriage is any of your damn business.”

  Suddenly, Crow wasn’t sure either. “I’m your fiancée’s pseudofather’s best friend’s illegitimate son,” he said.

  Hyatt smirked and gazed out over Crow’s head. “Then I guess that makes us family,” he said. “In which case, brother, I’m sure you’ll forgive me if I tell you to fuck off.”

  “Just tell me one thing.”

  Hy lowered his eyes to a focal point in the vicinity of Crow’s forehead.

  “What did you do that got the Amaranthines so upset they’d want to hurt you? I mean, really.”

  Hyatt considered for a moment, then said, “I don’t like to see innocent people ripped off.”

  “Meaning yourself?”

  “Meaning the Pilgrims.”

  “What does it cost to become immortal these days?”

  “That depends on how much you’ve got.” He winked, spun on one heel, and walked back down the sidewalk, striped pants fluttering, huaraches slapping his soles.

  21

  Every man has two countries, his own and France.

  —Henri de Bornier

  LAURA DEBROWSKI HUNG UP the phone and walked out onto the shallow balcony. She had been counting on hearing Crow’s voice. She lit a cigarette and leaned out over the railing. On the sidewalk below a man with a green plastic broom was sweeping. A woman in high heels walking a toy poodle picked up her pace to walk quickly past the sweeping man. He said something as she passed, and the woman made a face that may have been a smile. Observing such uneventful encounters had occupied much of Debrowski’s time during her first weeks alone in Paris, but lately the street life had come to seem pedestrian. The fact that the people here spoke French could no longer camouflage the fact that their daily lives were as trivial and mundane as those of people elsewhere.

  She would wait a few more minutes, then try Crow again.

  The afternoon session at SuperSon had not gone well. René Missett, the vocalist and leader of Les Hommes Magnifiques, had shown up at the studio forty minutes late with an ugly hangover. He said he was too sick to make any decisions, he was tired of being the leader, and they should all fuck off and die. He deposited himself on a plastic bench and fell into a fitful sleep.

  “He’ll be okay in an hour or so,” Debrowski said to the engineer. She’d seen René in this condition before. “Maybe we can get some work done before he wakes up.”

  The other members of the band laughed uncomfortably. In the absence of René’s guiding hand, Bobo, Vincent, and Antoine were lost.

  Vincent and Bobo wanted to do a song Bobo had written called “American Friend.” Antoine, the drummer, maintained that the song was too “Paris.” He was unable to explain what he meant by that, but refused to be swayed. He tried to wake René for support, but René simply glared at him, looking as if he might throw up at any moment.

  Debrowski, still hoping that they might get some work done, suggested that they run through Bobo’s song once, just to see how it sounded. Vincent, Bobo, and Antoine all looked at René, who roused himself enough to sit up and say, “I’ve got a better idea for the title. We call it ‘The American Cunt.’ How do you like that, eh?”

  Debrowski quickly said, “I like it.” She didn’t care any more, as long as they got something on tape. Her relationship with Les Hommes had been increasingly difficult lately. When they’d first started working together, the band had treated her like a goddess. She was the producer from America, their ticket to the big time. She would deliver them to the promised land of concert halls and rivers of cash and groupies by the bedful. For a few weeks, they had devoted several hours of every day to writing and rehearsing, trying to come up with enough songs to fill a disc. Debrowski’s suggestions had been taken as gospel.

  “You only need one great tune and two okay ones to make Billboard,” she told them. “The rest of the CD can suck.” Les Hommes had started out with a unique, hard-core sound and one great tune—a three-minute tour de force called “Ça me fait shier,” which would translate on the American disc as “It Makes Me Shit.” They’d laid down that track in their first afternoon at SuperSon. The rest of the album had not gone so smoothly. As the band members, and René in particular, had become more familiar with Debrowski, her pedestal sank slowly into the earth.

  One week ago as they all stood in the Metro waiting for the Mairie D’Ivry train, René had felt familiar enough to give Debrowski’s ass a rather aggressive squeeze, to which she had responded by bringing her boot heel down on his instep. Vincent, Bobo, and Antoine had derived great merriment from watching René hopping about on one foot, cursing wildly.

  That might have been the end of it, but René’s character was such that he chose to regard Debrowski’s foot-stomping as a form of flirtation. The next night, his inhibitions eclipsed by several glasses of marc, he had shown up at her hotel saying he wanted to go over some new song ideas, but as soon as he got inside her room he’d made it clear that his ideas were of another sort. Debrowski gave him fair warning, and when that didn’t work she clubbed him between the legs with a one-litre bottle of Perrier.

  Thereafter, René had discontinued his physical advances, but he was unable to restrain himself from taking frequent verbal shots at her femininity, at what he perceived as her dubious sexual orientation, and at her American origins. Debrowski tried to ignore him and focus on completing the album. The other band members seemed embarrassed by René’s behavior at times, but because René was male, French, and their leader, they let it go.

  “Okay then,” René stood up and shuffled over to the microphone. “Hey Jules!” he shouted at the man in the sound booth. “You ready for us, Jules? We’re gonna lay this one down the first try.”

  Jules, who had been patiently waiting at 140 francs per hour, gave the thumbs up.

  Going into this supposedly final session they had, in addition to “Ça me fait shier,” a half dozen mediocre tunes, one that was marginally good, and three stinkers that needed serious remixing, at the least. Les Hommes Magnifiques’ debut album would not be what Debrowski had hoped, but if they could come up with one decent B-side rocker, it might play in the States. She’d heard them do “American Friend” live. It had potential. Les Hommes, for all their problems, had their moments of creative brilliance.

  Despite Antoine’s objections to the tune, he laid down a powerful backbeat, and René launched into an entirely new and apparently ad-libbed set of lyrics, which described, Debrowski quickly realized, the rape, beating, murder, mutilation, and dismemberment of an American woman in Paris. His bloodshot eyes never left her face as he screamed into the microphone.

  Laura Debrowski had once believed herself to be un-shockable. She had thought she
had heard, seen, or done just about everything. But she had never heard anything like this, at this volume, aimed with such malice directly at her. It was a tremendous performance, Les Hommes at their rocking best. She knew she was hearing Les Hommes’ first hit single, and it frightened and disgusted her beyond anything she had ever heard in a recording studio—or anywhere else. She looked back at Jules in the sound booth, but instead of finding shocked indignance on his face, found herself facing a delighted leer. Wooden-faced, Debrowski left the studio. She walked for four kilometers back to her hotel, feeling utterly alone for the first time since she had arrived in Paris. She forced her mind away from Les Hommes and imagined herself in her room with the phone in her hand and Joe Crow on the other end.

  Now she was here and the son-of-a-bitch wasn’t home.

  She picked up the phone and dialed again. His answering machine picked up, again. She said, “You bastard! Where the hell are you?”

  She heard a click. “I’m here,” Crow said, sounding breathless.

  Debrowski began to cry.

  Crow’s mind had become so cluttered with the morning’s events that he’d forgotten about Debrowski’s promised phone call. It hadn’t hit him until the phone started ringing, just as he entered his apartment. He tossed the foil-wrapped shotgun on his sofa and picked up the phone.

  “Men are scum,” Debrowski said. Her voice sounded wrong. Was she crying? Impossible.

  “I completely agree with you,” he said, playing a safety.

  “Why haven’t you called me?”

  Crow thought quickly. He hadn’t called her, of course, because he didn’t know how to reach her. But this was not the time to make that argument.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “Where are you?”

  “I’m in France! Where the hell do you think I am?”